1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication in a mobile communication system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for providing connectivity of the P2P communications in the mobile communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a mobile communication system, a calling terminal communicates with a called terminal over a mobile communication network regardless of a distance to the called terminal. That is, regardless of the distance between the calling terminal and the called terminal, the call is always connected to the called terminal via a base station or a mobile switching center of the mobile communication system. When the calling terminal is sufficiently close to the called terminal, it may be more appropriate to directly communicate with the called terminal without the intervening relay of the base station. Herein, the direct communication between the terminals without the intervention of the base station is referred to as a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication. Various services are available through the P2P communications and include massive file transfer, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video conference, and so forth. The P2P communications can provide the same services provided via the base station, with the same quality.
For typical P2P communication, the terminal uses a separate frequency band other than a frequency band allocated to the mobile communication system. That is, a different frequency band than that used for communication through the BS. Accordingly, the terminal includes separate Radio Frequency (RF) transmitters and receivers to process different frequency band signals, such as Infrared Data Association (IrDA) wireless communications or Bluetooth communications. However, when the P2P communications and the mobile communications occupy the same frequency band, the spectral efficiency can be enhanced by addressing interference and flexibly adjusting the transmission bands using an efficient resource employment. For doing so, research is being conducted on a WINNER system in Europe.
However, the conventional P2P communications between user terminals is performed by adaptively regulating a transmit power depending on channel conditions between the terminals. Thus, when the user terminals are distant from each other or when the channel conditions are severely degraded, the limited transmit power of the terminal is not sufficient to handle the communications and it is difficult to provide the connectivity of the P2P communications.